KR Review #7: Sei-Lha

PoliganToys makes a big leap forward this month with its first all-human female figure - Sei-Lha^TM!

Sei-Lha is the seventh action figure prototype I've received from PoliganToys.

Details

Name: Sei-Lha

Subtitle: brave soldier

Classification: human

Sex: female

Relationships: Masq-Lor's love interest

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: second lieutenant; expert in electronic & computer engineering and veterinary medicine.

Background

Also Sei-Lha's first appearance takes place in The hidden halberd, where she's presented as a respected member of Tir-Hing's troops and a real badass, especially when armed with her hyper-technological backpack. The daughter of Xonedar^TM, Sei-Lha grew up in Theriom City and was trained in military techniques since her childhood, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant. Her missions often involve scouting the borders of Tahron for signs of lurking villainy. She has never known the identity of her mother and is yet to become aware of her true nature.

Articulation

Standard, excluding hinged abdomen.

Description

Head: brown skin, short brown hair, blue eyes; to me she definitely looks pretty, a kind of mix between Halle Berry and Rihanna

Body: arms and legs covered with a tight beige&brown camouflage uniform

Wearables: a light-blue bulletproof vest, two silver bracelets, two silver boots, a silver belt and light-blue shorts.

Action feature

I really think the strength of the figure lies in the action features that come with it. In the comics Sei-Lha is equipped with a hyper-technological backpack, which has been built by her father (another amazing character that we'll probably see in November). So, the figure comes with her backpack and the related harness, both in silver colour (only the background of the chest plate is light-blue). Fictionally, this backpack can produce a number of tools, two of which are included as accessories with the figure and can be mounted (one at a time) to the back harness after detaching the backpack. The first tool is a pulley with a string (fictionally a cable) and two grappling hooks, which allows Sei-Lha to slide from one point to another, similarly to a zip line. The system works quite smoothly, but the hooks are not strong enough to secure the "cable", it is necessary to tie the extremities of the string around some objects. The second tool is an airplane-shaped jet-pack with hinged wings, which can also be used as a hovering jet-board (with Sei-Lha standing on it) by tilting the "tail of the plane" up to transform it into a handlebar. This hovering mode is well simulated thanks to the presence of three small wheels under the board. Both the tools are very well designed and painted in the same silver colour of the harness/backpack. But that's not all. We also get two missile launchers (each can fire one missile thanks to a spring-loaded mechanism) and two mechanical arms (each with a 3-point articulation). Basically, the two launchers can be directly connected either to the sides of the pulley or to the wings of the jet-pack/board; more sophisticatedly, each launcher can be attached to one extremity of a mechanical arm and the arms can then be connected either to the sides of the pulley or to the wings of the jet-pack. In the latter mode, Sei-Lha is able to grab the launchers in her hands. In addition, the rear part of each launcher looks a bit like an exhaust, so I like to imagine that it also works as a propulsion system.

Sei-Lha's stylised harness over bulletproof vest; the oval at the centre of the chest plate represents a silver version of the Theriom symbol.

Weapons and accessories
If you thought that the amazing accessories listed above are the end of the story, well, you'd be wrong, because there's more: an alternative head and a shield. Let's start with the second head - in the comics a light-blue helmet can also be produced by the backpack, exactly like all the other gadgets, and together with the figure we get a nice replica of Sei-Lha's helmeted head. This has a silver microphone, an antenna and a black glass visor that can slide into place over her eyes by means of two silver sidepieces. I really like the fact that the visor is a separate piece and can be removed. Actually, the whole helmet is removable, revealing a sort of shiny balaclava which covers part of Sei-Lha's head; I have no memory of this detail from the comics, so I guess it's just an addition to the toy. To sum up, with just two heads we are able to expose Sei-Lha in five different ways: helmet-less with hair, helmet-less with balaclava, helmeted without visor, helmeted with visor up, helmeted with visor down... wow! The second accessory is a rotating blade shield, which is definitely cool. It's a round metallic light-blue shield equipped with a 3-blade coaxial piece, which spins when is given a flick.

Sei-Lha's stylised helmet.

Overall, Sei-Lha is a great figure, with lots of accessories. The only disappointing detail, in my opinion, is the colour of the bulletproof vest - the light-blue definitely clashes with the camo design of her uniform. Also, I'm going to repeat what I already wrote about Demo-Rha: in the comics Sei-Lha has many different looks, including plainclothes, full suits of armour and demoniac (i.e., possessed by the spirit of Demo-Rha's father, Nemhisto) and I hope we'll see all of them released as variants of this character in the future.